Affectionately Apart, Intimately Close
by Ecatar
Summary: Kuchiki Rukia has decided to attend a private university outside Karakura town, away from her best friend Kurosaki Ichigo, who attends a community college by day, and aids his family by night. Inoue Orihime finally begins to develop the friendship she's always wanted with Kurosaki. Are Kuchiki and Kurosaki affectionately apart, or is Inoue intimately close? AU


Library seats were especially cold things, specifically when the weather was warm outside. The skin on her right calf seemed to always catch on the metal bar that connected the legs of the chair, and it was quite annoying. The annoyance wasn't particularly painful, more like a chapped cuticle than a paper cut.

She rubbed her left thumb along the bar, checking for some sort of residue. There wasn't any.

The "sticky bar" problem served as a distraction from her writing, and perhaps a needed one at that.

She wanted her pen to stick, like the skin of her right calf, to the paper. She wanted the adhesive to be sweet, and smell like honey, so she could write beautiful things. She was never particularly good with words.

Well, she wasn't very good with sweet words. She was quite the motivator, if she did say so herself.

Still, the empty table she sat at was beyond lonely; it felt like existence had corroded around her, pushing her to her little corner seat. Though, that wasn't it at all.

She chose to sit alone, in the library, and on an even larger level, this campus. It was a symbol of her strength, her fortitude in the face of separation from her much worse, taller half.

That was why she would write the perfectly worded letter, to her best friend, probably poorly positioned in some community college classroom lecture at that moment.

She hadn't heard her phone vibrate in quite a while, much less feel it in the bones of her hand. It was quite embarrassing for her, considering the empty seats positioned around the table.

"Bastard."

She didn't realize her music was still playing in her headphones until the librarian walking by gave her a very generous middle finger. She must have said that quite loud.

The librarian was probably a bastard though. It was nearly undeniable, actually.

She turned One Ok Rock up a little bit louder on her MP3, a gift from Isshin Kurosaki, and stuck her right leg to the seat, the soft arch of her left foot on top of that. She bit her lip, and focused in.

When she finished her letter, she felt a little bit of sweat, from the salty burn, drip into her eye. She would have wiped it away, but it felt natural, considering the little pools of perspiration she'd created behind her knee caps were the skin stuck together, and under her thighs after they unmolded from the seat. Getting the sandal back on her left foot was quite the trick as well.

She thought about how she might smell when she got up, how other people would react if she stood in line next to them or if she passed them in the hallways.

Regardless, she kind of liked it. When she sweated out the heat of her apartment sleeping, her couch smelled a little bit like strawberry, the strength of her perfume diluted.

Ichigo had a pillow that smelled a little bit like strawberry and sweat.

It was probably thanks to Kon. He had a habit of conjuring her smell.

The sun had disappeared outside, and the cool of night air tingled its way up the sweat on Rukia's legs.

She wondered how good the cool metal of a mailbox would feel. Would it be sticky?

Orihime ran her fingers along the edge of Kurosaki's sheets, the pale tan of her nail polish blending in to the color of the sheets, only the white of her skin ruining her camouflage. She wished her skin was more tan, a perfect blend with the sheets. She wanted to be a part of that fabric.

Thinking things like that put a knot in Orihime's throat. It was one of those traumatic events that she'd replay in her mind a few times over the next few years, groaning in rembrance of it whenever she was alone.

She groaned then, but she wasn't alone.

"You don't have to stay Inoue. I think I've got the hang of it now," he said.

"No it's fine. I don't have anything better to do. Plus, I'd like to be here until you finish," she replied.

She wasn't leaving unless he made her. She could smell sweet strawberry ice cream, though faintly. It was masked by the smell of wood, and sweat from the summer heat.

She wondered how he captured that blend of smells, feeling the wood of his room through bottoms of her leggings on her toes, and remembering how Kurosaki smelled at school.

Where'd the sweat come from? He was perfectly calm in a cardigan and jeans over the summer. He wasn't the sweating type.

She liked to imagine Chad would come over a lot, and they'd do things like play Pictionary or charades, just the two of them. They'd end the night with some Chinese checkers, or Mancala.

But Chad didn't seem to sweat much either. He smelled like cake spices, even when they worked out together.

She was suddenly self-conscious about the wet spot on her back where her shirt met the side of the mattress.

"How's Chad, Inoue?" he asked.

"Well I figured you'd probably see him more than me, right? Considering you're guys and all," she replied.

"Not really. He's not really that type of person," he said.

"Oh, well I think if you just spend some more time with him, he'll open up more," she said.

"I think that's just the effect you have on people," he replied.

He looked over with a smile. His pen stopped moving, and a few seconds passed by.

She felt incredibly guilty.

"No way Kurosaki. Anyway, he's fine I think. I only see him once or twice every few weeks. It's been a while," she said. She continued to feel guilty, now that they were having an actual conversation.

"That's good. Well, you know, I think I'm done for today. I've got something to do tonight anyway," he said.

"What are you doing? If you don't mind my asking," she said.

Did she really want to know? She guessed she did if he was going to play twister with his family, or go grocery shopping in the expired food isles. She wanted to do those things too.

"I promised someone I'd take them to the movies, and it's too late to come up with an excuse," he said.

She considered that it was precisely the right time to come up with an excuse, and that he had one right in front of him in a math textbook. She found her way to her feet, though.

"I'll be going then Kurosaki. I hope you do really well on your math exam," she said.

It took a great amount of courage to grab his chair and squeeze as she walked past him, because she made a baby step towards actually grabbing his shoulder and squeezing.

"And I doubt you'd ever make an excuse," she said.

The walk to the door was quite the embarrassingly lonely thing. The space around the room was filled with a lack of reply from him.

She remembered the wet spot on her shirt, too, and she never considered herself more illprepared.

She felt his phone vibrate on the desk in front of him in her teeth as she grabbed the door handle. They'd never really exchanged messages. Were messages or phone calls more personal?

"Inoue, I hope I see you more often," he said into the void.

She didn't know how to reply; she didn't want him to turn around. If his was facing her like this, she could cry if she needed to.

"I'll be sure to bring Chad by next time!"

What an idiot.


End file.
